Before cashing out to make way for a West Lafayette Village high-rise, convenience store owner hanging on

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – It’s a lonely hour spent with Praveen Gulati on the curb outside the cashier’s booth of the Smart Shop, a three-pump gas station he’s owned midway up State Street hill since September 2003.

Gulati has time on a pleasant afternoon to go over how by this fall, if things come together the right way, his store will be snapped up to make way for a 15-story retail/student housing complex, the third development of more than 10 stories proposed in the past year in a huge transformation of West Lafayette’s Village area.

Not that he’s excited about leaving.

If he could, he’d hang on and be a part of what’s being billed as a State Street renaissance – no matter how sweet the offer is for his 0.4-acre lot, which would be a little under a half of the footprint of a proposed project dubbed Hub Plus.

What that standing offer is for 101 W. State St., Gulati won’t say. Just up the hill, developers paid $7 million and $5.3 million for lots that, at just shy of an acre apiece for land, were roughly twice the size. (The Tippecanoe County assessor lists the value of the Smart Shop property at $365,400 for tax purposes.)

“I don’t want to be sitting here, blocking what my city is doing,” Gulati said. “I want to see my city – I’ve been here 23 years – growing up with this progress. That’s my way of thinking of it.”

Gulati talks casually, not rushed by the sound of a cash register.

Of course, things are usually slow in the shadow of Purdue University, when the school is in the thick of summer break. With State Street torn up, starting just uphill from his entrance and all the way to Grant Street – four blocks away in West Lafayette’s Village area – Gulati has tossed the Smart Shop’s 24-hour schedule in favor of construction-adjusted hours: Noon to 10 p.m., until State Street reopens to traffic in mid-August.

He’s been through orange-barrel hits on his customer traffic in the past. He owned a second Smart Shop on Sagamore Parkway North, a block north of South Street in Lafayette, until he sold it a few years ago to Family Express, an Indiana-based chain.

“I’m like a construction magnet, I guess,” Gulati said, as a Chevy Silverado cut through his lot, splitting the islands with vacant pumps offering $2.39-a-gallon gas. “A bigger company, they can sustain for a year or more. For me, one man, I cannot sustain.”

Gulati had time to wave and watch and the pickup driver didn’t bother to brake as he curled through the Smart Shop short cut and up South Salisbury Street. He had time to do the same when a blue Oldsmobile, in need of some brake pad attention given the whine coming from the front end, aimed for the parking garage of the apartment complex across the street. The driver, eyes locked straight ahead either out of concentration or sheepish convenience, missed the gesture.

“I know slow – Purdue summer slow. But like this?” Gulati asked, arms sweeping past the fenced-in dirt where new sewer lines and utilities are being laid and nodding at the suggestion the people might think he’s already gone – given news about the high-rise waiting in the wings.

Finally, a guy on a bike – late teens, maybe early 20s – flew down the other side of Salisbury Street, past the Triple XXX restaurant, fast enough that he skidded into a fishtail when he hit the brakes in the gravel that has served as the Smart Shop entrance for the past three weeks.

Gulati excuses himself to take care of the first person through his door in that hour. The cyclist comes out seconds later, hops on his bike and pedals over to the McDonald’s at State Street and River Road. Gulati follows him out and shrugs. The guy on the bike might have been 18 – a close call just looking at him – but he said he’d left his ID at home that could prove it.

“I told him to come back and see me,” Gulati said. “No sale.”

Hub Plus, left, shown in a sketch filed with Area Plan Commision, is a planned 15-story retail and apartment development at State and Salisbury streets. It would be built next to Rise at Chauncey, a 16-story building planned for the corner of State and Chauncey Avenue in West Lafayette. Hub Plus would be the third proposed development of 10 stories or more in the past year in the West Lafayette Village area, near Purdue University.(Photo: Area Plan Commission)

The city has been desperately trying to assure people that they can get to their favorite businesses in the Village area, despite the intense tear-out happening this summer in a $120 million project designed to make West Lafayette and Purdue more pedestrian friendly. Signs are popping up along the chain link suggesting easy, albeit longer, walking routes to restaurants. At another end of State Street, the city persuaded Wabash Landing to offer free two-hour parking in its garage as parking disappears out front of the shopping center near Tapawingo Drive.

Erik Carlson, West Lafayette’s development director, said it’s no coincidence that the heaviest State Street construction happened just west of the Smart Shop entrance. He said the city was working with contractors to keep delivery lines open to Gulati’s place – just as it is to get customers to other businesses dealing with construction.

“We didn’t want to include him in the hard closure,” Carlson said.

Gulati said he’s behind the State Street project – “100 percent.” One reason: The project, split evenly by West Lafayette and Purdue, is meant to spur the sort of big-time development that made Gulati’s Smart Shop property so juicy for a developer.

He surveys the lot after another car does a pass-through his lot, skipping a fill-up or a stop in to check the supply of Red Bull, candy bars, deodorant and smokes – despite the sign out front that announces “Inventory Reduction Sale. Deep Discounts. Come Inside!”

“All day like this,” Gulati said. “It is kind of like watching my demise. People must think I’m already finished.”

Gulati will cash out at some point, he admits. Until then, he said, “I have bills to pay, permits to keep up.” And he said he’s too young to retire, too young for Social Security. He said he’d like to land a convenience store in the 15-story complex going on his land – “though I don’t think that is going to be a possibility. I don’t know if people think a place like this fits in anymore.”

Finally, a delivery driver with an AJ’s Burgers and Beer sign stuck to its roof pulls in and pays cash for $10 in unleaded. Gulati chalks up a sale after an hour of zero.

And then Gulati has time to talk some more.

“I will drive by this place one day, and I will be very emotional,” Gulati said. “I raised my children with these businesses. I work hard. Now I have to look for something new. … I understand. I welcome the city’s move and the development. I’d like to think I helped make it happen.”

Another driver, this one in a Buick sedan, pulls through the Smart Shop lot, without a glance and without hesitation. Gulati shrugs again, heading into a second lonely hour.

“See?” Gulati said. “Maybe you’ll put a line or two about our inventory. Have people come see me. I’m still here – for now.”